The best bit....

Like most things in life, how I feel about travelling changes as I get older and my priorities and outlook change.

As a youngster, the best bit about going on holiday was the anticipation and the START of the trip. Like Christmas eve, I could never sleep properly the day before we went off on holiday, and the excitement of travelling to the airport, and then getting aboard the plane, often seemed to outstrip anything that followed during our week or ten days in Magaluf . I remember being particularly excited about the taxi-ing and warm-up of engines part, rather than the take off itself. Even ear popping on the descent was something I looked forward to!

As time wore on, I began to enjoy the 'middle bit' of travelling most, particularly when my wife and I got married abroad and spent a fantastic few weeks in sunny luxury and the worries of the world were distant. We are fortunate to have been able to travel to a lot of nice places in arelatively short space of time and I cherish the relaxed and romantic memories as travelling with the family obviously changes that to quite an extent!


Travelling with the kids has several especially good bits in fairness - normally the first one is the "aaah... we're finally sorted" part of having arrived at our destination and got the little treasures to bed. Our last holiday had a particularly good part early on in the trip when our eldest girl, having had a sudden and irrational fear of getting into swimming pools that lasted for 18 months, suddenly decided it was brilliant again, and that Daddy and middle girl had to join her at every waking moment. The pride I felt as she thrashed her way along with a veritable assortment of flotation aids attached, shouting "I'm swimming I'm swimming" will never leave me.

Getting home again with the kids is also a triumphant moment, especially if the return trip has gone smoothly, without any projectile vomiting on the plane or tantrums or little people getting lost in the airport. We're blessed (touch wood) with three kids that have thus far been pretty tranquil about travel, so generally we get back to chez UDH feeling pretty happy about the whole experience.

Travelling alone for business has one truly good bit. The coming home bit. I've spent a week or thereabouts away from home now and it feels like a year. I fully expect to find Flisan, my middle one, has dyed her hair green and got a nose ring, and that my eldest Gummis has started dating a kid that plays in a rock band at school. My little boy Gubban, who was 3 and a bit months old when I left a week ago, is probably walking and all of them will have steadfastly forgotten who I am.

Thankfully I had a super-enjoyable last 5 hours in HK, systematically trying to shift some wealth from Germany to HK in the form of credit card obliteration, and the assortment of presents for all will hopefully refresh their memories.

I've missed them all SO much. The best bit is definitely the coming home bit.

Hong Kong (not) Phooey?

As a young kid I always thought the Phooey part of 'Hong Kong Phooey' was a naughty word along the lines of a 'number two'. (I think in hindsight it was related to our hero's Kung Fu skills, but you never know...).

As an adult, or at least as a 27 year old FX trader (which some would say is more along the lines of a 15 year old pre pubescent boy...) I visited HK for the first time and began to wonder if Phooey really related to the stinkyness and unpleasant fug that lingered perpetually in the air there (unless it was raining like the world was going to end...).

So it was something of a surprise to visit HK this last week and find a lot less smog than London has and clear blue sunny skies on several days. It seems that the closures of so many mainland factories in neighbouring provinces, along with some half-serious attempts to cut down on industrial air pollution, have completely changed the mucky face of HK and allowed the sun to shine on this amazing city once again. I also couldn't help noticing that the streets were much cleaner than I'd remebered from the previous trip - perhaps the Chinese regime is harder on litter louts than the Brits were (handover was just a year before my last visit)?
I was astounded that HK Park has a crystal clear lake, devoid of even a scrap of litter and the massive Koi carp mooching about in the sun didn't appear to be under threat of being fishnapped into a dustbin and turning up on eBay.(Its happened in Hampstead!)
Meanwhile the expat community is declining as the banking world capitulates and the uber-rich elite local Chinese landlords nervously eye rental rates that used to reach eye-watering levels ratchet lower and bigger percentages of their portfolios sit empty than ever before.
HK is bizarrely on the way up and down at the same time, but for the short term visitor appears to be a much nicer place to be than it was 10 years hence.